Ted Bauman: Invest In Chinese Stocks

One of the hot topics that have been taking up a lot of media time is the trade war between the United States and China. Some believe President Trump is doing the right thing taking a tough stance with China. President Trump sees the tariffs as a means to fix the trade imbalance between the two countries and to punish China for stealing intellectual property. Economist Ted Bauman is of the mindset that the trade war is only going to have negative ramifications for the global economy if it does not end.

While he opposes the trade war, he recently has been advising fellow investors to start paying attention to the potential bargains in the stock market that are occurring because of the fear of the trade war. He noted that the iShares China Large-Cap ETF was selling at a major discount. This ETF tracks some of the largest publicly traded companies in China. Ted Bauman listed some of the favorable metrics of the ETF that he thought made it appealing to investors. He noted the price-to-earnings ratio was 2.6. He said that it was only five years ago that investors had no issue paying a price-to-earnings ratio of 15.

Today this represents just how truly undervalued some of the biggest companies in China are. He also looked at the distribution percentage and the yield hadn’t hit that level since 2009. Ted Bauman says the trade war has had implications for the Chinese yuan. The currency has been declining since the start of the year. As the US placed tariffs on Chinese exports, this prompted the Chinese government to let the yuan fall in value. The stock prices of Chinese companies have moved with China’s currency. To date, the Shanghai Composite has lost eighteen percent of its value. Ted Bauman feels that China could end up doing more to retaliate against the United States. President Trump is threatening further tariffs if China does indeed retaliate. A move China could take is to hurt US companies that do business in China. This would eventually drive stock prices down in the United States, as many of these companies are listed on major stock exchanges.